If I'm not writing, you can probably find me over at Disneyland. If you click through using links on the site, we may earn an affiliate commission. The black grille is standard, but you can chuck yet more money at name and score a ‘terracotta’, ‘olive’ or ‘peacock’ alternative for a little more pizazz. Well, first and foremost you have to keep in mind that Beam has been primarily designed to assist with TV sound - that’s why Sonos has been so keen to pack as much technology as possible inside. It delivers rich sound with deep bass, full midrange, crisp highs, and more. Quite a few of the speakers in this list make a big deal about their ability to produce ‘true’ stereo sound. Where macOS does come into its own with AirPlay is audio. B&O's M5 sports a more traditional look, but still brings the noise … Smooth and full-bodied, but deft and detailed at the same time, these little boxes are capable of frankly unlikely scale and dynamic variation. And AirPlay 2 works on a number of Sonos speakers - so if you own a second-gen Play:5, Playbase or the more recent Beam soundbar, you have an AirPlay 2-ready system. As a standalone speaker Apple's HomePod Mini is likely more at home in a kitchen, but a pair of Minis working in stereo is a great, affordable, living room option. Beneath that ribbed, contoured full-width grille are two tweeters, two FST midrange drivers and a central woofer - they’re powered by a total of 240 watts, which makes the Wedge plenty powerful enough for most real-world applications. First launched waaaaay back in 2004 – but called AirTunes at the time and pretty limited by today's standards – AirPlay as we know it now wasn't announced by the Cupertino giant until 2010. More discreet, in fact, when you look at the Bowers & WIlkins and Naim alternatives. The Formation Wedge may have all the functionality of any other reasonably expensive wireless speaker, but it makes such a strong aesthetic statement - especially in the sliver/white finish - that it’s possible some people will buy into it on looks alone. AirPlay is Apple’s proprietary streaming technology, which allows you to wirelessly transmit music from an Apple device to AirPlay-compatible devices via Wi-Fi. AirPlay 2 is an incredibly easy way to send the tunes from your devices to speakers all around the home wirelessly. While it did act as an AirPlay receiver, it's not compatible with AirPlay 2. AirPlay 2 went live on iOS, HomePod and Apple TV back in 2018. You wouldn’t want to squander all that money on a speaker that doesn’t sound great, after all. Powered by Apple’s S5 chip, the HomePod Mini is basically a little computer - using computational audio to deliver its audio performance. It has a distinctive design with multiple finishes that will spice up any room. The design is likely to divide opinion more than the sound, because a) Naim’s speaker is huge and heavy to the point that you won’t want to move it when you’ve found it a home, and b) it looks virtually identical to the product it replaces. It even works the same way as multi-room audio works on iOS with AirPlay 2. Apple Music subscribers can even play different music on different speakers. This means you can use them in HomeKit’s Scenes to play audio in addition to adjusting the lights. There’s no subwoofer here, and it’s fair to say the Sonos Beam is slightly short of bass extension and definition - but the Beam can easily be augmented by additional speakers from the Sonos line-up. The HomePod sound is delivered by a total of seven beam-forming tweeters arrayed in a circle, along with an upward-firing 102mm long-throw mid/bass driver. Read on to find out everything you need to know about Apple AirPlay 2 and how you could be getting more from your media setup. Finally, Apple has a viable method of getting some whole-house, multi-room, wireless functionality from a whole host of speakers, TVs and the like. The Sonos One is the least expensive of the four supported speakers, so if you don't already have one, you can pick one up on Amazon and add it to your Sonos system. Or just ask Siri to play music on any of the other HomePods in your home, or get the assistant to skip track, turn up the volume or any other hands-on instruction you don’t want to use your hands for. AirPlay 2 lets you play videos, music, photos, and more directly from your iPhone, iPad and Mac, direct to your TV. Save up to $70: Amazon has the Apple Watch down to as low as $169. And unlike some speakers, which require the user to perform a calibration set-up to achieve this, the HomePod does it automatically. Oh, hello KEF. The S5 chip works with advanced software to analyze the characteristics of the music and apply complex tuning models to optimise loudness, adjust the dynamic range, and control the movement of the driver and passive radiators in real time. Once iOS 11.4 dropped, though, HomePod gained AirPlay 2 and with it the ability to painlessly establish a multi-room audio system, or to unify two HomePods to deliver true stereo sound. As long as you have one of the AirPlay 2 supported speakers, you can connect the rest of your Sonos system and pipe your favorite tunes throughout the entire house. Note: iOS devices cannot stream to both AirPlay 1 and AirPlay 2 speakers simultaneously. On your Mac, you can do all the iOS bits and bobs – i.e. However, it’s only the latest Sonos speakers – the One (both generations), Beam, Amp, Move, Arc, Five and Play:5 (2nd-gen) – that are officially able to stream music using AirPlay 2… I've been writing about Apple and video games for almost a decade. Some features, like creating a stereo pair from two wireless speakers, are only possible using AirPlay 2. It's the same little button that appears and, from Control Center, you can also mirror your iPhone or iPad's display. The LSX features a 4-inch Unit-Q driver that delivers astonishing clear sound over 160-degrees for a truly immersive experience. You can do both things at the same time. Use Spotify Connect for super-convenient streaming. Click on one HomePod.3. it’s better value than, for instance, the Sonos Playbar. Up top there are three rockers for physically customising the sound - volume, bass and treble and you can also tweak further using the useful, if somewhat basic, Marshall Voice app. The likes of Samsung, Sony, Vizio and LG are all involved - you can check out a full list of compatible AirPlay 2 TVs here. It's a pretty good music speaker, not amazing and not quite as strong as the likes of the latest Echo or Nest Audio but perfectly acceptable in a bedroom, which is the perfect room in the house for the Streambar. Sure, you may know the basics of AirPlay – you can ping music from your iPhone to your Apple TV – but have you ever gone beyond that? In terms of physical connections, the Wedge has just an Ethernet socket - everything else happens wirelessly. But at the start in 2019 Apple announced it was bringing AirPlay 2 to third-party smart TVs. Dimensions: HxWxD (cm): 17 x 8.8 … Note: iOS devices cannot stream to both AirPlay 1 and AirPlay 2 speakers simultaneously. Happily, the audio quality will not disappoint. And that’s a speaker that’s been a global favourite for quite some time. Confusingly, you'll sometimes see an AirPlay icon appear when you're watching a video and you'll click it to find that only the audio is sent over. Here's our picks for the best options around. That helps to create a great multi-directional audio performance. It’s packing four full-range drivers, a centre-mounted tweeter and three passive radiators - the driver array is designed to mimic a left/right/centre channel arrangement, and there’s no doubt they create a pleasantly wide soundstage with clear and distinct separation. No, for ‘true’ stereo sound you need two speakers. If you've got a bunch of AirPlay speakers, Apple TVs and the like you'll see a menu pop up where you select the receiver you want to hear your music on. From the AirPlay logo in iTunes, you can select multiple speakers and have them all playing in harmony. Copyright Wareable Ltd. All rights reserved. This wireless speaker is a winner at this level. 2. AirPlay 2 is Apple's updated way to store content to TVs and other devices. The original Mu-so by British hi-fi company Naim was an absolute powerhouse, with a wide-open soundstage and very serious bass. How does it sound? Where both Siri and the HomePod itself are rather less useful is when you step outside the Apple Music bubble. Throw in a pretty seamless multi-room experience with original HomePods and AirPlay 2 speakers and you've also got a genuine Sonos-rival on your hands. But with AirPlay 2 now on board as well, the Siri voice assistant can come to the party too. We think the Sonos looks a little better - it can easily slip onto a bookshelf and look the part. You can even play a game on your phone and nothing will happen. Sonos One (Gen 2) The Sonos One is a market leader for a reason. The build is compact, so it fits in … If ever a speaker was born for AirPlay 2, Apple’s HomePod smart speaker is it. The audio quality here sounds like a full-on concert experience, as it offers 4500 watts and frequency ranges of 14Hz to 27kHz and 108 dB. Essentially it's a two-way protocol, made up of a sender and receiver, that works over Wi-Fi. You can click these boxes to play your music on multiple speakers at the same time. It’s an unusual and painstaking arrangement, and it allows HomePod to deliver a really wide, non-directional sound that is plenty powerful enough. Get the full picture on Apple TV 4K. On the iOS device, swipe down from the upper-right corner of the screen to view the music control panel. Beam is pretty and compact (it’s 65cm wide), so will fit happily under most televisions - and although it’s not cheap (when was Sonos ever cheap?) Offering super-rich sound quality that fills the room, this is the one you probably want! AirPlay 2 has a much-greater buffering capacity, so your audio plays without interruptions or delays even if you’re out of Wi-Fi range for a minute, if you answer a phone call, or if you stop to record a video of an un-missable moment. So, if you have multiple AirPlay 2 compatible speakers, you can take the utmost advantage of this feature to rev up your music time. Ethernet too: Bang & Olufsen M5. Judged purely on audio quality, it’s hands-down the best speaker on this list - and with Bluetooth, digital optical, USB and 3.5mm analogue methods of getting music into the Naim, it’s not short of facilities either. However, load the same YouTube URL on Chrome and the option is gone (replaced by a Chromecast logo, the sneaky so-and-sos). Ditch the wires and AirPlay your movies and music from your iOS devices, TV's, and streaming boxes directly to your soundbar. The speaker itself is Bluetooth, as mentioned (4.2 if you're wondering) and is both Apple AirPlay 2 and Spotify Connect compatible. AirPlay 2 means you can stream whatever you’re playing on your Apple device, no matter the streaming service it’s coming from, but Siri is unable to select music from services beyond Apple’s own. The best performing sound bar from Bose, the 700 offers a sophisticated design with exceptional sound. It has Alexa and Google Assistant built in, just like the Sonos One, and now has AirPlay 2 to boot. Even though AirPlay 2 wasn’t on board from Day One. They can’t, of course - even if they receive stereo information, and even if they deliver it in a nice, wide manner, it’s still originating from a single source. The Apple uses spatial awareness, alongside a six-microphone array and internal bass-EQ mic, to sense the size and shape of the room it’s in and then adjust itself accordingly for optimum audio quality. Another great smart speaker, when Sonos launched its first voice-controlled speaker the main talking-point... Naim Mu-so 2nd Generation. If you playback music from your iPhone or iPad with your TV on, the Roku will also display album art. Then, when you selected the AirPort Express on the AirPlay drop-down mirror it would, in turn, play the music through those speakers. Inside the One (which looks like almost all the Sonos speakers that have gone before it) there are a pair of Class D amplifiers, one to power the single tweeter and one to drive the mid/bass driver. The Libratone Zipp 2 is a portable Wi-Fi + Bluetooth speaker that supports AirPlay 2. But before going ahead, ensure that your devices are updated. Apple TV is actually capable of being both a sender and a receiver – it can act as a speaker for music sent over from an iPhone, for example, but it can also ping its audio to a HomePod speaker. As per a regular streaming stick, it puts a selection of streaming apps onto a single input on your TV, but it can also make your non-Roku TV experience better, whether from a cable box or your smart TV platform's native apps as it's HDMI ARC compliant; it can pass back audio from any source back through the soundbar. AirPlay 2 does a lot more than Bluetooth: It lets you send both audio and video to a growing variety of devices such as TVs, speakers, and home theater receivers, all sans wires. From an iOS device you can also also stream visuals – think photos and videos from your stream, and movies from iTunes and third-party apps – to an Apple TV or AirPlay 2-compatible smart TV. The M5 is also one of the few AirPlay 2 speakers available that features an ethernet port to keep things simple. AirPlay 2 is Apple’s way of casting any audio from your iPad, iPhone, Mac or Apple TV to another AirPlay 2-enabled device. But now the likes of Sonos and B&W are on board, ubiquity is surely not all that far away. Given the way it looks, it’s not surprising there has been a lot of comparing and contrasting going on between the Sonos One and the Apple HomePod. It comes in several color options. AirPort Express was Apple's networking accessory, but the company is bringing that product to the end of its life. B&O's M5 sports a more traditional look, but still brings the noise with 360-degree sound. You can either stream to one speaker compatible with AirPlay 1, or you can stream to one or more speakers compatible with AirPlay 2. Compatible with HomeKit and Siri, the Streambar extends its Apple compatibility to being a fully-fledged AirPlay 2 speaker as well. AirPlay 2 unlocks several promised features of the speaker, including multiroom and stereo pairing (the ability to use separate HomePods as left and right speakers). Multi-room audio and AirPlay 2 are very exciting, but there's another feature that HomePod and the HomePod Mini can pull off thanks to AirPlay 2. Thems the breaks we're afraid – the world of third-party AirPlay can be an annoying place. Thanks for reading. Even though AirPlay 2... Sonos One. Sonos added Apple’s AirPlay 2 to the mix pretty quickly after Apple set it live. You can mix-and-match AirPlay-2 compatible speakers from other audio brands to create a more versatile multi-room system. The best AirPlay 2 speakers Apple HomePod. When listening to music on your iPhone or iPad – either from Apple Music or third-party apps with AirPlay built in – you can push the little AirPlay button to send that audio to a receiver. As far as audio performance is concerned, all of Bowers & Wilkins’ hard work has paid off, and in some style. A decent budget option, The latest (and smallest) Marshall smart speaker went live earlier this year, with a Sonos One rivalling price-tag. The little cabinets are available in a choice of five tasteful finishes. And sure enough, the Mu-so 2 basically sounds great. Select Create stereo pair.4. Let's start with the simplest AirPlay operation. Site powered by Upfeat Inc. 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With AirPlay 2, you can "throw" audio from your iPhone, iPad, or Mac to a receiving device, such as a speaker, and it stays in-sync as you move from room to room. The price will be even more divisive. Especially when you consider what a small and unassuming device the HomePod is. Supports AirPlay 2 Yamaha doesn't make too much fuss about its MusicCast speakers, but it actually produces one of the widest ranges of AirPlay speakers of any audio manufacturer. AirPlay 2 also makes it easier to party with friends. Get some music playing via AirPlay 2 and you can use Alexa to pause, skip track, or even ask what’s currently playing. Sonos Beam is a compact soundbar that plugs into your TV via HDMI-ARC and is also equipped with AirPlay 2 support. It can go loud but it also gets a bit messy and maybe even a touch distorted. … In the market for a new wireless smart speaker but waiting to see what speakers will support the multiroom functionality of Airplay 2? As long as all the devices are on the same wi-fi network, you simply have to access the music controls on your iPhone, Apple TV or MacBook's iTunes and select a connected speaker (or more) to send the music to. Wait no more as Sonos has confirmed Airplay 2 support is coming later this year to a selection of its newer speakers via a free software update. Libratone ZIPP 2 Smart Wireless Speaker (with Alexa built-in, AirPlay 2, MultiRoom, 360 ° Sound, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Spotify Connect, 12 hrs Rechargeable Battery) - Frosty Grey 4.3 out of 5 … Obviously Apple wants you to buy a HomePod and we'd recommend grabbing one of our top picks, but there are around 50 speakers that are AirPlay 2 ready. It delivers a mighty sound that fills the room. That's not it for music streaming though, the Streambar also acts as a Bluetooth speaker and is compatible with with Spotify Connect and Google Casting. We may earn a commission for purchases using our links. 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